Emily Griffith, founder and CEO of the health food company Lil Bucks, found herself in a tough spot in mid-2020. “I was in the valley of death,” she shared, referring to the capital gap between a friend and family round. “The pandemic slowed down my fundraising efforts substantially.” Griffith founded a health-focused buckwheat business in 2018, and had seen steady growth of her business through retail channels, including an anticipated launch into Whole Foods WFM 0.0% stores. Then, the pandemic hit, retailers pulled back, and shopping habits quickly changed.

She, like many other entrepreneurs, had to quickly pivot her ready-to-eat buckwheat business from a retail-focused strategy to selling online, direct to consumers. She turned to fellow female founders for advice, and they suggested that she try crowdfunding.

“I had been targeting angel investors, and a lot of that activity really slowed down back in the spring of 2020,” Griffith explains. “In May [2020], I started to plan for our online fundraising campaign. I wanted to make sure that we could have cash coming in to finance my e-commerce acceleration and my retail launches, and I wasn’t sure what was going to be happening in the venture space given the uncertainty of the pandemic.”

Griffith turned to Republic, an online crowdfunding platform that allows individuals to invest in privately-held U.S. companies and to gain a piece of the pie as an equity holder. According to its website, Republic has facilitated $150 million in funding to businesses, and 800,000 members are signed up on its platform. Over the last few weeks, Griffith has raised $64,000.

Founders are utilizing crowdfunding for a few reasons—to fund growth, to finance capital expenditures, or to support R&D. Some platforms, like Kickstarter, allow individuals to contribute by buying a new product or service. On other platforms, like Republic and Wefunder, individual investors can own a slice of the company, sometimes for as little as $50, in an equity investment.

Interestingly, women-led crowdfunding campaigns are more successful in reaching their fundraising goals than those led by men, according to research by PricewaterhouseCoopers. In a study of 416 Kickstarter campaigns, researchers from Indiana University found that women have an easier time fundraising than men, because they appear to be more trustworthy. These statistics runs counter to the fact that when it comes to venture funding an overwhelming majority (97.7%) went to men in 2020, with female founders receiving just 2.3% of venture capital dollars last year.

Read the full article about food founders by Shayna Harris at Forbes.